Functional regions for the population census of Great Britain

Abstract

This [paper] summarizes an attempt to come to grips with methodological and practical problems of defining a set of functional urban regions for use in the 1981 Population Census of Britain. The authors conclude that a daily urban system is the best unit for presentation of spatial data and an operational algorithm is developed in order to identify daily urban systems in the United Kingdom. The algorithm is applied to 1971 census data and compared with other regionalizations. The future availability of statistics for the recommended areas is considered. (EXCERPT)